Away with you to utter perdition! You are trifling with me. ERGASILUS So may holy Gluttony So may holy Gluttony : The Parasite very appropriately deifies Gluttony: as the Goddess of Bellyful would, of course, merit his constant worship. love me, Hegio, and so may she ever dignify me with her name, I did see— HEGIO My son? ERGASILUS Your son, and my good Genius. HEGIO That Elean captive, too? ERGASILUS Yes, by Apollo Yes, by Apollo : In the exuberance of his joy at his prospects of good eating, the Parasite gives this, and his next five replies, in the Greek language; just as the diner-out, and the man of bon-mots and repartee, might in our day couch his replies in French, with the shrug of the shoulder and the becoming grimace. He first swears by Apollo, and then by Cora, which may mean either a city of Campania so called, or the Goddess Proserpine, who was called by the Greeks, Κορὴ, the maiden. He then swears by four places in Campania—Praeneste, Signia, Phrysinone, and Alatrium. As the scene is in Greece, Hegio asks him why he swears by these foreign places; to which he gives answer merely because they are as disagreable as the unsavoury dinner of vegetables which he had some time since promised him. This is, probably, merely an excuse for obtruding a slighting remark upon these places, which would meet with a ready response from a Roman audience, as the Campanians had sided with Hannibal against Rome in the second Punic war. They were probably miserable places besides, on which the more refined Romans looked with supreme contempt.